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REPiy TO HENRY 6E0RGE, 



BY 



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N OTES 



ON 



PROGRESS AND POV[RTy, 



ii 



A Reply to Henry George. 



BY 






l-i 



REV. F. L. TOBIN. 



Rector of St. James' Church, West End, Pittsburgh, 




PITTSBURGH, 

PRINTED BY JOHN M. WELSH, 530 SMiTHFIELb STREET. 
1887. 



(mprimatur, 

f R. PHELAN, 

Ep. Coadjutor. 



COPYRIGHT SECURED; 
Entered according to an Act of Congress, in the 3 ear 1887, by Rev. V. 
Li Tobiiij in the office of the Librarian of Congress.AVashington, D. C. 



ERRATA. 

Page 34, line four, for or read but. 

Page 44, before the paragraph beginning, "I do not 
lose sight," insert the following: 
By holding the property for three years 

he expects to receive 64,000 00 

Profit on the speculation §2,692 50 

Page 51, fourth line from bottom of page, should 
read, o treatise on the dismal science. 



PREFACE 



The appeai'cance of this pamphlet naturally suggests 
two questions, viz.: 

First — Is there need for another criticism of Mr. 
George's theories? 

Second — Why has this latest essay been so slow in 
making its appearance? I shall try to answer both. 

1. Mr. George's economic teachings have been re- 
futed by several writers. Some of these have con- 
tented themselves with defending the justice of private 
property in land by abstract reasoning, not easily fol-^ 
lowed or keenly relished by the majority of readers. 
Others have adduced facts and marshalled formidable 
lines of figures, which completely demolish the struc- 
ture reared by Mr. George ; but their essays have been 
published in reviews or magazines that circulate almost 
exclusively amongst educated people, or in the form 
of books which do not find their way to the homes or 
the hands of the working classes. 1 am far from find- 
ing fault with such replies ; they have done good, each 
in its own sphere ; but there is room and even need for 
one more — one that will be clear, brief and cheap ; one 
that will take up Mr. George's reasoning, point after 
point, and expose the fallacy of his arguments. Not 
literary men or college graduates, not clergymen or 
lawyers, but the rank and file of the people are in most 
danger of being led astray by his teachings. But work- 
ingmen are little skilled in dialectics and not much 
disposed to question the logic of one who poses as their 
champion and promises to redress their real or imagin- 
ary wrongs. The writer who would undeceive the 
mass of Mr. George's readers must aim to remove the 
impression which he has made on their minds, must 
lay bare his fallacies and point out his errors. I do not 



NOTES ON PEOGRESS AND POVERTY" 



dare to hope that this essay will accomphsh that result. 
I offer it as an earnest, if unsuccessful, attempt in that 
direction. 

2. To the second question I answer that I have heen 
waiting for some abler writer to perform the task. 
But when month after month had passed awa}" and tlu^ 
hoped for reply had not made its appearance I deter- 
mined, perhaps rashly, to attempt it myself. 



Notes on " Progress and Poverty." 



CHAPTER I. 

The Problem. 

The problem, which the book before us is an attempt 
to solve, is stated in the introduction. 

*'In the United States it is clear that squalor and 
misery, and the vices and crimes that spring from tliem, 
everywhere increase as the village grows to the city, 
and the inarch of development brings the advantages 
of the improved methods of production and exchange. 
It is in the older and richer sections of the Union that 
pauperism and distress among the working classes are 
becoming most painfully apparent. If tliere is less 
deep poverty in San Francisco than in New York, is it 
not because San Francisco is yet behind New York in 
all that both cities are striving for? When San Fran- 
cisco reaches the point where New York now is, Avho 
can doubt that there will also be ragged and bare- 
footed children on her streets?" — Page 12. 

"But just as such a community realizes the condi- 
tions which all civilized communities are striving for, 
and advances in the scale of material progress — just as 
closer settlement and a more intimate connection witli 
the rest of the world, and greater utilization of labor- 
saving machinery, make possible greater economies in 
production and exchange, and wealth in consequence 
increases, not merely in the aggregate, but in ])ropor- 
tion to population — so does poverty take a darker as- 
pect. Some get an infinitely better and easier living, 
but others find it hard to get a living at all. The 
*'tramp" comes with the locomotive, and almshouses 
and prisons are as surely the marks of ''material pro- 
gress" as are costly dwellings, rich warehouses and 
magnificent churches. Upon streets lighted with gas 
and patrolled by uniformed p(jlicemenl)eggarswait for 
the passer-by, and in the shadow of college, and library 
and museum, are gathering the more hideous Huns 
and fiercer Vandals of whom Macauley prophesied." 
—Page 10. 



6 XOTES ON PROGRESS AND POVERTY. 

Now is all this true? Is the condition of the Avork- 
ing classes growing worse while material prosperity 
and wealth are increasing? Strangely enough, Mr. 
George does not attempt to prove the existence of the 
problem which he undertakes to solve. If there be no 
such problem, "Progress and Poverty" is so much 
waste paper. We are justified in meeting a bare 
statement with a curt denial. It is Mr. George's duty 
to prove his assertion, not ours to disprove it. 

Some writers have disputed his preliminary assump- 
tion, and have produced facts and figures to prove that 
he is wrong. Those who wish to pursue the subject 
would do well to consult Mr. Mallock's interesting 
work on ''Property and Poverty." Instead of giving 
any of his figures, which refer only to England, I shall 
content myself with citing a few taken from the United 
States Census Keports, and found in the "Encyclopedia 
Brittannica" (supplement to ninth edition, Art Manu- 
facture). The average wages earned by employes in 
manufacturing establishments throughout the United 
States was as follows : 

In 1850 ....$247.27 

In 1860 288.94 

In 1870 377.60 

In 1880 346.63 

The apparent decrease in the last decade was a real 
increase. On account of the inflation of values in 1870, 
the purchasing power of $377.60 in 1870 was less than 
that of $346.63 in 1880. Even these figures do not give 
the full gain of later over earlier years, for the propor- 
tion of females employed in manufacture is greater 
now than formerly ; and, as they receive less pay than 
males, the proportionate increase in their numbers 
tends to lower the average wage-rate. 

An examination of this question would require more 
space than I can devote to it. Let us suppose then 
that Mr. George's preliminary statement is correct, 



XOTES ON PROGRESS AND POVERTY. 



that poverty is on the increase, and [iroeeed to examine 
how he proposes to remedy so great an evil. 

He is careful to define the terms which lie (Mni»l(n's 
in his treatise. To some of them he attaches a mean- 
ing different from that which they commonly receive. 
I give his own exphination. 

** As used in common discourse '* wages" means a 
compensation paid to a hired person for his services ; 
and we speak of one man "working for wages," in con- 
tradistinction to another who is '* working for himself." 
The use of the term is still further narrowed hy the 
habit of applying it solely to compensation paid for 
manual labor. AVe do not speak of the wages of pro- 
fessional men, managers or clerks, but of their fees, 
commissions, or salaries. Thus the common meaning 
of the word wages is the compensation paid to a hirecl 
person for manual labor. But in political economy 
the word wages has a much wider meaning, and in- 
cludes all returns for exertion. For, as political econ- 
omists explain, the three agents or factors in produc- 
tion are land, labor, and capital, and that part of the 
produce which goes to the second of these factors is 
styled by them wages. 

Thus the term labor includes all human exertion in 
the production of Avealth, and wages being that ])art of 
the produce which goes to labor, includes all reward 
for such exertion^ There is, therefore, in the politico- 
economic sense of the term wages no distinction as to 
the kind of labor, or as to whether its reward is received 
through an employer or not, but wages means the re- 
turn received for the exertion of labor, as distinguished 
from the return received for tlie use of capital, and the 
return received by the landholder for the use of land." 
— Pages 26 and 27. 

Of capital he says : 

"Dr. Adam Smith correctly expresses this common 
idea when he says : 'That part of a man's stock which 
he expects to afford him revenue is called his capital.' " 
—Pane 30. 

Land is defined : 

"The term land necessarily includes, n(jt merely 
the surface of the earth as distinguished from the water 



S NOTES ON PROGRESS AND POVERTY. 

and the air, but the whole material universe outside of 
man himself, for it is only by having access to land, 
from which his very body is drawn, that man can 
come in contact with or use nature. The term land em- 
braces, in short, all natural materials, forces, and op- 
portunities, and therefore, nothing that is freely sup- 
plied by nature can be properly classed as capital." — 
Page 31. 

The difference between capital and wealth is thus 
explained: 

''Now, as capital is wealth devoted to a certain pur- 
pose, nothing can be capital which does not fall within 
this definition of wealth. By recognizing and keeping 
this in mind, we get rid of misconceptions which vitiate 
all reasoning in which they are permitted, which befog 
popular thought, and have led into mazes of contradic- 
tion even acute thinkers. 

But though all capital is wealth, all wealth is not 
capital. Capital is only a part of wealth — that part, 
namely, which is devoted to the aid of production." — 
Page 34. 

The term rent is taken to mean the equivalent paid 
for the use of land only. What is given for the use of 
buildings or improvements is not rent. Mr. George ex- 
plains further : 

''Where owner and user are the sSme person, what- 
ever part of his income he might obtain by letting the 
land to another is rent. * * * When land is pur- 
chased, the payment which is made for the ownership, 
or right to perpetual use, is rent conunuted or capital- 
ized." 

For a fuller understanding of these terms, I must 
refer the reader to " Progress and Poverty" itself. 

CHAPTEK II. 

Are Wages Drawn from Labor or Capital? 

Our author begins his inquiry with the following 
question : 

" Why, in spite of increase in productive power, do imges tend 
to a minimum which will give but a bare living f — Page 16. 



NOTES ON PROGRESS AND POVERTY. "J 

The answer coninionly given is that the rate of wages 
is tixed by the ratio between the capital investcnl in 
the enipk>yinent of hibor, and the number of laborers 
employed or seeking employment. If the luunber of 
workingiuen be small in proportion to the capital in- 
vested, wages will be higli ; if the number be large 
when compared with the amount of capital, wages will 
be low. Although the demand for labor grows with 
the accumulation of capital, the supply of labor grows 
more rapidly still. Workmen increase in number more 
rapidly than capital in quantity ; demand does not 
keep pace with supply ; hence the tendency of wages is 
downward. 

Mark the word tendency. This downward tendency 
may be checked or even overcome by various causes, 
which it is neither my province nor my purpose to dis- 
cuss. I commit myself to no theory, as 1 am writing, 
not a treatise on political economy, but a criticism on 
Mr. George's teachings and methods. 

Our author admits that the explanation given above 
is accepted by the greatest Avriters on political economy, 

''In current thought this doctrine holds all but un- 
disputed sway. It bears the indorsement of the very 
highest names among the cultivators of political econ- 
omy, and though there have been attacks upon it, they 
are generally more fonnal than real. * ^ * It is 
taught in all, or nearly all, the great English and Amer- 
ican universities, and is laid down in text books, which 
aim at leading the masses to reason correctly upon 
practical affairs." — Page 16. 

Mr. George lays before us his reasons for rejecting 
this theory. His attempted refutation is the pons asin- 
orum of his economic system, and I beg the reader to 
study it closely ; otherwise it will hardly be understood. 

''And yet, widely accepted and deeply root(Hl as it is, 
it seems to me that this theory does not tally with ob- 
vious fact. For, if wages depend ui)on the ratio be- 
tween the amount of labor seeking employment and 
the amount of capital devoted to its employment, tlu^ 



10 KOTES OK PROGRESS AISTD POVERTY. 

relative scarcity or abundance of one factor must mean 
the relative abundance or scarcity of tlie other. Thus^ 
capital must be relatively abundant where wages are 
high, and relatively scarce where wages are low. Now, 
as the capital used in paying wages tmist kirgely cmisist of the 
capital constantly seeking investment, the current rate of in- 
terest must be the measure of its relative abundance 
or scarcity. So, if it be true that wages depend upon 
the ratio between the amount of labor seeking employ- 
ment and the capital devoted to its employment, then 
high wages (the mark of the relative scarcity of labor) 
must be accompanied by low interest (the mark of the 
relative abundance of capital), and reversely, low 
wages must be accompanied by high interest. 
This is not the fact, but the contrary." 

. The words which I have put in italics, are the key of 
the position. "The capital used in paying wages " does 
wof*' consist largely," or at all, "of the capital con- 
stantly seeking investment." The former is invested, 
the latter uninvested capital. To understand this dis- 
tinction is to see the fallacy of our author's reasoning, 

" So if it be true that wages depend upon the ratio 
between the amount of labor seeking employment and 
the capital devoted to its employment, then high wages 
(the mark of the relative scarcity of labor) must be ac- 
companied by low interest (the mark of the relative 
abundance of capital), and reversely, low wages must 
be accompanied by high interest." 

Not at all—just the opposite. Low interest is the 
mark of the relative abundance of unemployed capi- 
tal ; high interest, the mark of its relative scarcity ; and 
vice versa. Now the abundance of unemployed capi- 
tal means the comparative scarcity of employed capi- 
tal ; under such circumstances interest will be low. 
Wages, too, will be low, for the quantity of capital 
which employs labor will be small in proportion to the 
quantity of labor in the market. Again the scarcity of 
unemployed capital means the comparative abundance 
of employed capital ; when such is the case, interest 



NOTES ON PROGRESS AND POVERTY, 11 

will be high. AVages too will be high ; for the capital 
that employs labor will be abundant in proportion to 
the number of workingmon in quest of employnK^nt. 

It is impossible not to admire^ Mr. George's ingenuity 
in concealing the weak part of his argument. The 
guileless manner in which he tells us that the fund 
used in paying wages consists largely of capital seeking 
investment, is simply delicious. 

Our author next enquires whether or not wages arc 
drawn from capital, and decides in the negative. He 
lays down the following proposition : 

''The proposition 1 shall endeavor to prove isr 
That wages, instead of being drawn from capital, are in reali- 
ty drawn from the product of the labor for which they are paid." 
—Page 21. 

Here again his hand is against every man's and every 
man's hand against his. Writers on political economy 
are almost unanimous in maintaining that wages are 
derived from capital ; but Mr. George attempts to re- 
fute that theory-. 

No one will be likely to dispute the statement that 
the wages of the man who works for himself do not 
come from capital. The reason is plain ; such a laborer 
is his own employer. But Mr. George goes further. 
He teaches that the wages of the hired workman "are 
derived from the produce of the labor for which they 
are paid." This proposition he attempts to prove by a 
series of examples, connnencing with the simplest and 
most primitive form of hired labor, and ascending grad- 
ually to the most complex. 

" If I hire a man to gather eggs, to i)ick berries, or 
to make shoes, paying him from the eggs, the berries, 
or the shoes, that his labor secures, there can be no 
question that the source of the wages is the lalxn- for 
which they are paid." — Page 41. 

From this conclusion I must dissent. If the berries 
grow on my land, if the eggs are laid l)y niy fowl, the 



12 NOTES ON FKOGEESS AND POVEKTT. 

lured man's labor does not produce either eggs or ber- 
ries. If I employ a teamster to move my furniture 
from one bouse to another, no sane man will say that 
the teanistear's labor produces the furniture. Neither 
does the man whom I hire to move my fruit or my eggs 
from ray farm to the market, produce the fruit or the 
eggs. 

Perhaps Mr. George means that the berries grow wild 
and the eggs are laid by wild birds on unoccupied lands. 
In that case the man who gathers them is the owner. 
He may sell or give them to me, but I am not his em- 
ployer, and this is not a case of hired labor. I cannot 
be correctly termed the shoemaker's employer. The 
transaction between us is a partnership. I funmish the 
material, he does the work, and we divide the product. 
In a general sense a partnership may be said to exist 
between every employer and his employe, but in thiS' 
case we have a partnership proper, because the finished 
product is the property of both. Another instance. 

''The next step in the. advance from simplicity to 
complexity is where the wages, though estimated in 
kind, are paid in an equivalent of something else. For 
instance, on /American whaling ships the custom is not 
to pay fixed wages, but a "lay," or proportion of the 
catch, which varies from a sixteenth to a twelfth to the 
captain down to a three-hundredth to the cabin boy. 
Thus, when a whaleship comes into New Bedford or 
San Francisco after a successful cruise, she carries in 
her hold the wages of her crew, as well as the profits 
of her owners, and an equivalent which will reimburse 
them for all the stores used up during the voyage. 
Can anything be clearer than that these wages — this oil 
and bone which the crew of the whaler have taken — 
have not been drawn from capital, but are really a part 
of the produce of their labor ?" — Page 42. 

Mr. George fails again. The ship, the boats, the 
tackle for pursuing and killing the whales, the vessels 
used for receiving and storing the oil — all are capital 
furnished by the owner before a gallon of oil can be 



X(>TK> ON PlJoratKSS AND roVllKPY. llJ 

obtained. Moreover, diirint^ the voyage the erew eon- 
sujiies a quantity of food, which must he fui-nishcd l)y 
tlie owner from his capital, ami is just as nuich a part 
of the sailors' wages as the oil they reeeiv(^ after their 
return to port. Will anyone contiMul that tiic <liip and 
her stores are the jn-oduet of the ennv's lahor ? 

The next exam])le is the same in prineipk- as one of 
those already dis])Osed of. 

'' The Farrallone Islands, off the Bay of San Fran- 
cisco, are a hatching ground of sea-fowl, and a com- 
panj'- who claim these islands employ men in the proper 
season to collect the eggs." 

It matters not whether the company's title to the 
island is good or defective, they stand in the same posi- 
tion towards their hired men. This case is the same as 
that of the berries. The reader of *' Progress and Pov- 
erty " will apply the same principle to the next case, 
that of the Chinese employed in killing seals. 

Mr. George lays great stress on the fact that the per- 
formance of work precedes the payment of Avages. But 
the order in which the parties to the contract fulfill its 
terms, makes no change in the source from which tlie 
payment comes. If I order goods from New York, tlie 
price of them comes out of my pocket all the same 
whether I pay before or after I receive the goods. 
From tlu> fact that labor pre('ed(\< l)ayment we may in- 
fer that the food which the workman eats to-day does 
not come from wages for the work he does to-day, but 
we cannot conclude that it does not come from wages 
received for work done last week or last month. 

To do our author full justice, I give his argument m 
his own words : 

" 1 dwell on this obvious fact that labor always ju'c- 
cedes wages, l)ecause it is all imjjortant to an under- 
standing of the more complicated j)hen()mena c)f wages 
that it should be kept in mind. And obvious as it is. 
as I have put it, the plausibility of the proposition that 



14 NOTES ON POVERTY AND PROGRESS. 

wages are drawn from capital — a proposition that is 
made the basis for such important and far-reaching 
deductions — comes in the first instance from a state- 
ment that ignores and leads the attention away from 
this truth. That statement is, that labor cannot exert 
its productive power unless supplied by capital with 
maintenance. The unwary reader at once recognizes 
the fact that the laborer must have food, clothing, etc., 
in order to enable him to perform the work, and hav- 
ing been told that the food, clothing, etc., used by pro- 
ductive laborers are capital, he assents to the conclu- 
sion that the consumption of capital is necessary to the 
application of labor, and from this it is but an obvious 
deduction that industry is limited by capital — that the 
demand for labor depends upon the supply of capital, 
and hence that wages depend upon the ratio between 
the number of laborers looking for employment and 
the amount of capital devoted to hiring them. 

But I think the discussion in the previous chapter 
will enable any one to see wherein hes the fallacy of 
this reasoning — a fallacy which has entangled some of 
the most acute minds in a web of their own spinning. 
It is in the use of the term capital in two senses. In 
the primary proposition that capital is necessary to the 
exertion of productive labor, the term '' capital " is un- 
derstood as including all food, clothing, shelter, etc.; 
whereas, in the deductions finally drawn from it, the 
terra is used in its common and legitimate meaning of 
wealth devoted, not to the immediate gratification of 
desire, but to the procurement of more wealth — of 
wealth in the hands of employers as distinguished from 
laborers." 

There is no necessity for taking the word capital in 
a double sense. I use it throughout as Mr. George de- 
fines it. I do not call the food eaten or the clothing 
worn by the laborer capital, but I contend that the 
money which purchased them has been drawn from his 
employer's capital. To argue that it has not come 
from capital because it is no longer capital, is to argue 
that it has not come from the employer's pocket, be- 
cause it is no longer in his pocket. It is Mr. George 
himself who juggles with the word capital. He started 
out to prove that wages do not come from capital, and he 



NOTES ON PROGRESS AND POVERTY. 1") 

attempts to do so by showing that Avagesare not capital. 
Who ever said they were ? The suhstittitioii is ingeni- 
ous, but we see how the trick is done. 

It is not true that the performance of work invaria- 
bly precedes payment. Thousands of workers in mill 
or mine obtain provisions and clothing from the '^Com- 
pany's Store," as it is termed ; and many of them have 
their pay eaten up before it is du(\ 

Mr. George attempts to prove that wages are drawn 
from labor, even in the more complex forms of i)ro- 
duction. 

*^ Bring the question to the test of facts. Take, for 
instance, an employing manufacturer who is engaged 
in turning raw material into finished products — cotton 
into cloth, iron into hardware, leather into boots, or so 
on, as may be, and who pays his hands, as is generally 
the case, once a week. Make an exact inventory of his 
capital on Monday morning l)efore the beginning of 
work, and it will consist of his buildings, machinery, 
raw materials, money on hand, and finished product 
in stock. Suppose, for the sake of simplicity, that he 
neither buys nor sells during the week, and after work 
has stopped and he has paid his hands on Saturday 
night, take a new inventory of his capital. The iteiii 
of money will be less, for it has been paid out in Avages; 
there will be less raw material, less coal, etc., and a 
■proper deduction must be made from the value of the 
buildings and machincny for the week's wear and tear. 
But if he is doing a remunerative Vnisiness, which must 
on the average be the case, the item of linished pro- 
ducts will be so much greater as to compensate for all 
these deticiencies and show in the summin^^ up an in- 
crease of capital. Manifestly, then, the value he paitl 
his hands in wages was not drawn from his capital, or 
from any one else's capital. It came, not from capital, 
but from the value created l)y the labor itself." — Pacjei^ 
4() and 47. 

If the manufacturer be doing a paying Imsiness, the 
increase in his stock is at least equivalent to the wages 
he has paid out; no one supposes he has distributed 
the money in charity. But suppose he has been doing 



16 NOTES OX PROGRESS AND POVERTY. 

a losing business during the week, his increased stock 
is not the equivalent of the wages he has paid. Or sup- 
pose he has been experimenting with a new process or 
a hitherto untried material, and the experiment has 
])roved a failure. Or suppose he has been making an 
engine which, when completed, has some fatal defect 
and is absolutely worthless. About two years ago, the 
city of San Francisco made a contract with tAVO Pitts- 
l>urgh firms for a large number of steel plates to be 
used for water mains. In due time the plates were fin- 
ished, and were found fully up to the requirements of 
the specifications in every particular but one. Owing 
to some mistake, they Avere about an inch too small. 
They were rejected by the authorities of San Francisco , 
and the entire loss fell upon the manufacturers. Nev- 
ertheless, the men who made the steel received full 
pay for their labor. 

From what source do the workmen draw their wages 
in such cases? Not from the product of their labors 
for that is only a heap of rubbish ; it must be from the 
manufacturer's capital. Since wages are derived from 
capital in these cases, they must come from it in every 
case in which it employs labor ; for the relation of 
wages to capital is the same, whether the product be 
valuable or worthless. The workmen draw their pay 
in either case. The transaction, as between labor and 
capital, is complete as soon as the wages are paid, and 
no subsequent disposition of the finished material can 
change its nature. 

Another instance. 

'*As the laborer who works for an employer does not 
get his wages until he has performed the work, his case 
is similar to that of the depositor in a bank who cannot 
draw money out until he has put money in. And as 
by drawing out what he has previously put in, the bank 
depositor does not lessen the capital of" the bank, neither 
can laborers by receiving wages lessen even temporari- 
ly either the capital of the emyloyer or the aggregate 



NOTES ON PROGRESS AND POVERTY. 17 

capital of the comnnmity. Their wages no more come 
from capital than the checks of depositors are drawn 
against hank capital." — Paye 47. 

The cases are widely ditferent. The money drawn 
by the depositor is not deducted from the bank's capi- 
tal, for the good reason that it never formed a part of 
that capital ; but the cash received by the workman is 
taken from his employer's capital, for the equally good 
reason that, up to the time it was paid as wages, it was 
a part of that capital. 

The task of examining Mr. George's examples grows 
wearisome. I shall dismiss very briefly two instances 
taken from»the fourth chapter of his first book, in which 
he contends that the maintenance of laborers is not de- 
rived from capital. The comparison of a hired laborer 
to Eobinson Crusoe building his canoe, is utterly pre- 
posterous. 

''The canoe which Kobinson Crusoe made with such 
infinite toil and pains was a production in which his 
labor could not yield an inmiediate return. But was 
it necessary that, before he commenced, he should ac- 
cumulate a stock of food sufficient to maintain him 
while he felled the tree, hewed out the canoe, and 
finally launched her into the sea ? Not at all. It was 
only necessary that he should devote part of his time 
to the procurement of food while he was devoting part 
of his time to the building and launching of the canoe." 
— Page o'o. 

Can the laborer, who depends on his daily toil for his 
daily bread, devote his spare time '' to the procurement 
of food" while he is waiting for pay-day ? What our 
author says about a hundred men landed without pro- 
visions in a new country, is equally undeserving of a 
serious reply. If these two examples prove anything, 
they prove the very opposite of the conclusion Mr. 
George would deduce from them. Robinson Crusoe's 
work on the canoe did not support him while he was 
building it ; the hundred men were obliged to look 
elsewhere for maintenace while they were cultivating 



18 NOTES ON PROGRESS AND POVERTY. 



the soil. The work done to-day by the hhed workman 
does not, as a rule, furnish him with to-day's meals. 
They are bought with the money received for past 
labor, which was capital before he received it as wages. 
Mr. George sums up the result of his first book with 
anuising and amazing complacency. 

''We have seen that the current theory that wages 
depend upon the ratio betweeii the number of laborers 
and the amount of capital devoted to the employment 
of labor is inconsistent with the general fact that wages 
and interest do not rise and fall inversely, but con- 
jointly. 

" This discrepancy having led us to an examination of 
the grounds of the theory, we have seen, further, that, 
contrary to the current idea, wages are not drawn from 
capital at ail, but come directly from the produce of the 
labor for which they are paid. We have seen that cap- 
ital does not advance wages or subsist laborers, but 
that its functions are to assist labor in production with 
tools, seed, etc., and with the wealth required to carry 
on exchanges." — Page 67. 

How Mr. George has succeeded in establishing these 

propositions, I leave to the judgment of the reader. 

CHAPTER ni. 

The Theory of Malthus. 

The famous theory of Malthus is stated by Mr. George 
so clearly and so fairly, that I refer the reader to Book 
II, chapter 1, for an explanation of it. Those who 
have not ''Progress and Poverty" at hand, can obtain 
a correct idea of the Malthusian theory from the fol- 
lowing extracts : 

"The famous doctrine which ever since its enuncia- 
tion has so powerfully influenced thought, not alone in 
the province of political economy, but in regions of 
even higher speculation, was formulated by Malthus in 
the proposition that (as shown by the growth of the 
North American colonies) the natural tendency of pop- 
ulation is to double itself at least every twenty-five 
years, thus increasing m a geometrical ratio, while the 
subsistence that can be obtained from land ' under cir- 



NOTES OX PROflllKSS AND POVEJiTY. 10 

cumstances tlio most favorablo to human industry 
could not possibly be matle to increase faster than iu 
an arithmetical ratio, or by an addition every twenty- 
five years of a quantity equal to what it at present i)ro- 
duces.' " 

'* The essence of the Malthusinn doctrine \-i, that poji- 
ulation tends to increase faster tluin the power of pro- 
viding food, and whether this difference be stated as a 
geometrical ratio for population and an arithmeti- 
cal ratio for sul)sistence, as by Malthus ; or as a con- 
stant ratio for population and a diminish ing ratio for 
subsistence, as by Mill, is only a matter of statement. 
The vital point, on Avhich both agree, is, to use the 
words of Malthus, 'that there is a natural tendency 
and constant ett'ort in population to increase beyond 
the means of subsistence.' 

"The ^lalthusian doctrine, as at ]^resent held, may 
be thus stated in its strongest and least objectionable 
form : 

"That population, constantly tending to increase, 
must, when unrestrained, ultimately press against the 
limits of subsistence, not as a^amst a fixed, but as 
against an elastic barrier, whicli makes the procure- 
ment of subsistence progressively more and more diffi- 
cult. And thus, wherever reproduction has had time 
to assert its power, and is unch(^ckedby prudence, there 
must exist that degree of want which will keep i)Oi)U- 
lation within the l)Ounds of subsistence." — Pages 70 and 
71. 

Mr. George is clear and correct in the following state- 
ment : 

"It is not worth while to dwell upon the fallacy in- 
volved in the assumption of geometrical and arithmet- 
ical rates of increase, a play upon proportions which 
liardly rises to the dignity of that in the familiar puzzle 
of the hare and the tortoise, in which the hare is made 
to chase the tortoise through all eternity without com- 
ing up with him. For this assumption is not necessary 
to the Malthusian doctrine, or at least is exi)ressly re- 
pudiated by some of those who fully accept that doc- 
trine ; as, for instiince, John Stuart Mill who speaks of 
it as 'an uiducky attempt to give precision to things 
which do not admit of it, and which every person capa- 
ble of reasoning must see is wholly superfluous to the 
argument.' " 



NOTES ON PKOGKESS AISTD POVERTY 



The theory thus stated our author controverts, first 
l)y answering the arguments which support it, and sec- 
ondly by attacking it directly. And here much of his 
reasoning is clear and forcible. Where he is right, it 
will be a pleasure to agi'ee with him ; where he is mis- 
taken, it will be our duty to refute him. 

The arguments adduced by the followers of Malthus 
in defence of the doctrine which bears his name, may 
be briefly outlined in the following terms : 

1, Wherever w^e turn in the animal and vegetable 
kingdoms, we find the power of reproduction far in ad- 
vance of the means of subsistence, but held in check 
by causes which keep down the natural increase. Bab- 
bits, for instance, multiply so rapidly that, if not mo- 
lested, they would, at no very distant period, destroy 
all vegetation within their reach. But this result is pre- 
vented by two facts ; other animals use the same kind, 
of food and leave less for them, while still others prey 
upon them and destroy numbers of them. The enemies 
of rabbits, in their turn, are obliged to compete with 
other creatures for subsistence. We behold everywhere 
a continual struggle for existence, the result of which 
is the destruction of the weakest of every species and 
the ''survival of the fittest." This is the basis of the 
famous Darwinian theory. Keasoning from analogy, 
we must expect a like struggle amongst men, a like 
*' pressure against the limits of subsistence." 

2. We are confronted, moreover, by two facts which 
seem to put the teaching of Malthus beyond doubt. 
One is the constant increase of population ; the other 
the diminishing productiveness of land. Ground that 
has been continually tilled for a long time, begins to 
wear out, to produce scantier crops. New land brought 
under cultivation is, as a rule, inferior to the old, for 
the most fertile is occupied first. Thus the supply of 
food does not keep pace with the growth of population. 



NOTES ON PROGRESS AND POVERTY. 21 

which tends nior«? and more to press against the limits 
of subsistence. The pressure is felt soonest by the poor. 
The struggle for existence becomes keener, poverty- 
tends to deepen with the increase of population. 

In his contention that the argument drawn from an- 
alogy is far from conclusive, Mr. George seems to be 
right ; but I cannot say as much for his reply to the 
other argument. There is no evidence, he urges, that 
the population of the earth is greater now than it was 
thousands of years ago. What the population of the 
oarth was at that remote period is a mere matter of 
conjecture. Moreover, Mr. George's enquiry hasnotli- 
ing to do with the number of people who inhabited Asia 
or Africa two or three thousand years ago. The 
<luestion before us is narrowed down to this — is 
the population of manufacturing and commercial coun- 
tries increasing or not? And it is Mr. George himself 
who thus limits enquiry to such countries. (See intro- 
duction to *' Progress and Poverty.") This question he 
does not even touch. Had he done so, he could not 
have denied the fact that the population of every coun- 
try in Europe (except Ireland) is increasing every year. 
And the decrease in Ireland is caused directly by emi- 
gration ; so that the loss there is balanced by a gain 
elsewhere. Tlie figures, taken from the latest accessi- 
])le census returns, may be found in the '* Encyclopedia 
Britannica" (ninth edition, art. Population). There 
we read that the actual yearly rate of increase in the 
population of England and Wales between 1871 and 
1881 was 1.44 per cent, of the population in 1871 ." The 
following table gives the yearly rate of increase for the 
period mentioned. 

Annual rate 
Country. Period, ((f Increase. 

France 1 8H0-77 ;>-") 

Italy 18(51-78 71 

Ihiited Kingdom 1861-78 92 

England and Wales 18(50-75 1.24 



22 NOTES ON PROGRESS AND POVERTY. 

Annual ra'e 
Country Perio.l of Increase. 

Ireland 1861-78(decrease) 

Denmark 1860-78 1.11 

Sweden 1860.78 1.15 

Norway 1860-78 86 

Eussia in Europe 1863-75 1.11 

Austria (Cisleithan) 1860-78 86 

Hungary 1860-77 55 

Switzerland 1860-78 60 

Prussia (without recent annexations)..1861-75 98 

Prussia (with recent annexations)...... 1861-75 83 

Bavaria 1861-78 54 

Saxony 1861-78 1.56 

Wurtemberg 1861-78 76 

Holland 1859-77 95 

P>elgium 1860-78 82 

Portugal 1861-74 1.17 

Spain 1860-77 35 

Poland 1858-77 1.95 

Greece 1861-77 97 

Servia 1859-78 1.19 

United States 1870-80 2.61 

The following is a suiximary made by the same author; 

' 'Although some of the uncivilized people of the 
world are rapidly disappearing, the tendence of the 
population of the whole world is evidently to increase." 

The first contention of the Malthusians may be looked 
upon as established. 

Now for the second, viz.: The means of subsistence 
do not increase in the same proportion as population. 
Land that has been tilled for a long term of years, 
becomes more or less exhausted, and rewards the hus- 
bandman's toil with comparatively scanty crops. It 
may be artificially fertilized, but the process is laboii- 
ous and expensive, and increases the cost of food to 
the consumer. There is still, to be sure, much untilled 
ground, but it is generally inferior to that under culti- 
vation, because the first settlers select the most fertile 
soil. Much of the uncultivated land is mountain or 
bog, and can be reclaimed only by tedious and labori- 
ous exertion. Some is covered with timber, and must 



NOTES ON PROGRESS AND POVERTY. 23 

be cleared ; some is desert and can be made productive 
onl}' by irrigation. Moreover, increase in the number 
of consumers forces cultivation to more remote points, 
and makes transportation to the centres of distribution 
more difficult and expensive. 

The tendenc}' of increase of population is to make 
food more costly and therefore less accessible. In 
other words, population constantly tends to press 
against the limits of subsistence. 

Here is an ingenious attempt to answer the argument 
based on the diminishing productiveness of land. 

"But here will arise another idea from which the 
Malthusian theory derives great supi3(jrt — that of the 
diminishing productiveness of land. As conclusively 
proving the law of diminishing productiveness it is said 
m the current treatises that were it not true that be- 
yond a certain point land yields less and less to addi- 
tional applications of labor and capital, increasing pop- 
ulation would not cause any extension of cultivation, 
but that all the nicreased supplies needed could and 
would be raised without taking into cultivation any 
fresh ground. Assent to this seems to involve assent 
to the doctrine that the difficulty of obtaining subsist- 
ence must increase with increasing population. 

" But I think the necessity is only in seeming. If the 
proposition be analyzed it will be seen to belong to a 
class that depend for validity upon an implied or sug- 
gested qualitication — a truth relatively, which taken 
absolutely becomes a non-truth. For that man cannot 
exhaust or lessen the powers of nature follows from tli(; 
indestructibility of matter and the persistence of force. 
Production and consumption are only relative terms. 
Speaking absolutely, man neither produces nor con- 
sumes. The whole human race, were they to labor to 
infinity, could not make this rolling sphere one atom 
heavier or one atom lighter, could not add to or diniin- 
isli by one iota the sum of the forces whose everlasting 
circling produces all motion and sustains all life. As 
the -water that we take from the ocean must again re- 
turn to the ocean, so the food we take from the reser- 
voirs of nature is, from the moment we take it, on its 
way back to those reservoirs. What Ave draw from a 
limited extent of land may temporarity reduce the pro- 



24 NOTES ON PROGRESS AND POVERTY. 

ductiveness of that land, because the return may be to 
other land, or may be divided between that land and 
other land, or perhaps, all land; but this possibility 
lessens with increasing area, and ceases when the whole 
globe IS considered. That the earth could maintain a 
thousand billions of people as easily as a thousand 
millions is a necessary deduction from the manifest 
truths that, at least so far as our agency is concerned, 
matter is eternal and force must forever continue to 
act. Life does not use up the forces that maintain 
life. We come into the material universe bringing 
nothing ; we take nothing away when we depart. The 
human being, physically considered, is but a transient 
form of matter, a changing mode of motion. The 
matter remains and the force persists. Nothing is les- 
sened, nothing is weakened. From this it follows that 
the limit to the population of the globe can only be the 
limit of space." — -Pages 98 and 99. 

That no particle of matter is or can be destroyed by 
man is true. That all the food-producing elements 
taken from the soil by cultivation, return as such to 
the soil, is not true. That a proportion of them may 
be. restored by human labor, is true ; but the perform- 
ance of that labor increases the difficulty and the cost 
of procuring food from the soil, and thus makes the 
ever growing population press more and more against 
the limits of subsistence. " That the earth could main- 
tain a thousand billions of people as easily as a thou- 
sand millions," may perhaps be true in the childish 
sense that the earth would find no more difficulty in 
feeding the larger than the smaller number ; but is not 
true in the sense that a thousand billions of people 
could procure subsistence from the earth as easily as 
a thousand millions. 

Hear Mr. George once more : 

''While vegetables and animals do press against the 
limits of subsistence, man cannot press against the 
hmits of his subsistence until the limits of the globe 
are reached. Observe, this is not merely true of the 
globe, but of all its parts. As we cannot reduce the 
level of the smallest l3ay without reducing the level not 



XOTKS ON l'K()(4I!KSS AND POVPmTY. 



merely of the ocean with whieli it eoninumicates, but 
of all the seas and oceans of the world, so the limit of 
subsistence in any i)articular place is not the physical 
limit of that place, but the physical limit of the o-l()b(>. 
Fifty square miles of soil will, in the present state ol" 
the productive arts, yield subsistence for only some 
thousands of people, but on the fifty square miles Avhich. 
comprise the city of London some three and a half 
millions of people are maintained, and subsistence in- 
creases as population increases. So far as the limit of 
subsistence is concerned, London may 2,tow to a poj^u- 
lation of 100,000,000, or 500,000,000", or 1,000,000,000, 
for she draws for subsistence upon the whole glob(\ 
and the limit which subsistence sets to her growth in 
population is the limit of the globe to furnish food foi 
its inhabitants." — Pages 97 and 98. 

To this the Malthusian will reply as follows : It is. 
not true that " man cannot press against the limits of 
subsistence until the limits of the globe are reached." 
Pressing against the limits of subsistence does not 
mean that there is not sufficient food in the world for 
certain people ; it only means that, owing to their num- 
bers, they find great difficulty in obtaining it. The dif- 
ficulty may be only local. There may be famine in 
Chanaan, while there is plenty in Egypt. The difficul- 
ty" of procuring food may be partly due to causes othei- 
than over-population. If the latter be one of the fac- 
tors which cause even local scarcity, the product will 
be pressure against the limits of subsistence. These 
limits are more or less elastic ; they yield to pressure ; 
but the exertion of that pressure may hurt many per- 
sons and prove too great a strain for the strength of 
others. 

Mr. George's example will make this clearer. War 
between England and the Lhiited States would cut off 
a great part of their food supply from the people of 
London. The increased price of bread and meat would 
put these necessaries almost beyond the reach of the 
poorer classes. They would feel the pressure against 
the limits of subsistence long before the limits of the 



26 NOTES ON PROGRESS AND POVERTY. 

globe were reached. In time of peace, as the three 
and a half iiiillions of London grow to ten millions — • 
as the prairies of the West, which f nrnish food to vast 
herds of cattle without expense to their owners, are 
l)roken up into farms by new settlers, and cattle own- 
ers find themselves comj^elled to buy or rent pasture- 
lands — as the soil of our Western States becomes 
drained of the accumulated fertility of centuries by 
yielding every year immense harvests of wheat, while 
the farmers neglect to fertilize it or to economise its 
resources — as land becomes dearer and poorer and 
cultivation more expensive and more laborious — ^as the 
products of the soil will be needed at home to feed the 
rapidly growing population of this country — the bread 
and the meat which the inhabitants of London will re- 
quire, must become more costly than they now are. 
The poor of London will find it more and more diffi- 
cult to obtain food. In other words, the increasing 
population will press more and more against the limits 
of subsistence. Mr. George's illustration confirms the 
theory of Malthus. 

Nor is he more fortunate in the chapter headed — 
* 'Disproof of the Malthusian theory." It should have 
been entitled — Further proof of the Malthusian theory. 
I'The power of producing wealth," he writes, '*is the 
power of producing subsistence." Again we read. 

'' We have, in modern times, seen many communi- 
ties advance in population. Have they not at the same 
time advanced even more rapidly in wealth ? We see 
many communities still increasing in population. Are 
they not also increasing their wealth still faster ? Is there 
any doubt that while England has been increasing her 
population at the rate of two per cent, per annum, 
her wealth has been growing in still greater propor- 
tion ? Is it not true that while the population of the Unit- 
ed States has been doubling every tAventy-nine years 
her wealth has been doubling at much shorter intervals? 
Is it not true that under similar conditions — that is to 
say, among communities of similar people in a similar 



NOTES ON PROGRESS AND POVERTY, 



stage of civilization — the most densely i)()|)ul:ite(l con)- 
miinity is also the richest? Are not the more densely 
populated Eastern States riclKU'in proportion to j^jpula- 
tion than the more sparsely populated AVestern or 
Southern States? Is not England, where poi)ulation is 
<n'en denser than in the Eastern States of the I'nion, 
also richer in proportion? Where will you tind wealth 
devoted w'ith the most lavishness to non-productive; 
use — costly buildings, line furniture, luxurious equi- 
pages, statues, pictures, pleasure gardens and yachts? 
Is it not where population is densest, rather than where 
it is sparsest?" — Page 105. 

How effectually Mr. George cuts the ground from 
under his own feet. He tells ns himself that distress 
is sharpest where wealth is greatest. 

''Where population is densest, wealth is greatest^ and the 
machinery of production and exchange most highly 
developed — we tind the deepest poverty, the sharpest strug- 
gle for existenee,'' etc. — Introduction to Progress and Pov- 
erty. That is — where population is densest, wealth is 
greatest; where wealth is greatest, we find the sharp- 
est struggle for existence. Mr. George's reasoning 
confirms the Malthusian theory. 

Although the Malthusian doctrine has not fallen be- 
fore the assaults of Mr. George, he has dealt it some 
heavy blow^s. 1 have already mentioned his reply to 
the argument drawn from analogy — a reply which is 
simply crushing. His criticism of Malthus' Essay on 
Population is acute and, I think, correct. ''The main 
body of the book is taken up with wdiat is in reality a 
refutation of the theory wdiich the book advances."— 
Page 78. 

He tells us that there is no instance in history "of a 
considerable country in wdiich poverty and w^ant can 
be fairly attributed to the presence of an increasing 
population;" he points to the famines in Ireland, India 
and China, and shows that they w^re due to causes 
other than over-population. 

Very good as far as it goes, but it does not go far 



28 ■ NOTES ON PROGKPJSS AND POVERTY. 

onough, for the Malthusian is ready with his stereo- 
typed answer. He adiiiits that other causes generally 
concur, but insists that excessive population is the real 
cause, because famine or distress would not have 
scourged these countries if their inhabitants had been 
less numerous. Of the other factors which generally 
concur to produce want and famine, we find some- 
times one, sometimes another, sometimes none; over- 
population is the chief, often the only factor. As a 
proof that misery is often caused solely by over-popu- 
lation he points to the back-alleys of our great cities, 
teeming with thousands of people who barely eke out 
a wretched subsistence in the midst of peace and plen- 
ty. He attributes tlieir poverty to their numbers, and 
tells us glibly, in the jargon of his school, that popula- 
tion is pressing against the limits of subsistence. 

Here I take issue with the Malthusian. I deny that 
there is or can be over-population while there is abund- 
ance within reach to maintain every individual. Food 
and clothing, more than enough to satisfy the wants 
of all the hungi'y and ragged, are to be found in the 
stores and warehouses of every city in whose noisome 
slums the poor starve and shiver. There is no such 
thing as over-population; it is only the figment of a 
heartless and godless theory. The Creator provides 
and the earth furnishes more than enough for all. If 
any do not get their share, the cause is sometimes their 
own fault, but far oftener the greed and rapacity of 
their fellows. Granted that the tendency of popula- 
tion is to outrun subsistence, an all-wise Providence 
knov/s how to regulate that tendency so that the means 
of subsistence will always keep pace with the increase of 
population. How it Aviil be regulated, we do not know. 
Perhaps science may teach men so to economize the 
resources and develop the powers of the soil as to in- 



NOTES ON PKOGKESS AND POVERTY. 20 



t'rease the food supply ;i liuiulrtHl fold. Wc^ need luivc 
no fears for the future. He who feeds the hiixls of the 
air and clothes the lilies of the field, will never hriiiir 
iuinian heings into the world without nuiking ample 
}»rovision for their nniintenanee. 

CHAPTER IV. 

Lairs of Rent, Wages and rnterest, 

Mr. George thus states Kicardo's law of rent : 

''The rent of land is determined by the excess of its 
produce over that which the same application can se- 
cure from the least productive land in use." 

Then we have Mr. George's deduction: 

''Yet, is it not as plain as the simplest geometrical 
demonstration, that the corollary of the law of rent i? 
the law of wages, where the division of the produce is 
simply between rent and wages ; or the law of wages 
and interest taken together, where the division is into 
rent, w^ages, and interest? Stated reversely, the law of 
rent is necessarily the law of wages and interest taken 
together, for it ivS the assertion, tiiat no matter what be 
the production which results from the application of 
labor and capitol, these tw^o factors will only receive in 
wages and interest such part of the produce as they 
could have produced on land free to them without the 
payment of rent — that is the least productive land or 
point in use. For, if, of the prod uce, all over the amoiuit 
which labor and capital coidd secure from land for 
which no rent is paid must go to land owners as rent, 
then all that can be claimed by labor and capital as 
wages and interest is the amount which they could 
have secured from land yielding no rent. 

Or to put it in alge])raic form: 

As Produce=:Rent— Wages— Interest, 

Therefore, Produce — Re"nt:=Wages— Interest" — Pa(jt 
125, 

Our author plumes himself on being the first to dis- 
cover this "law of w^ages." Other great writers almost 
recognized it. "iVdam Smith only failed to appreciate 
the true law^s of the distribution of wealth" l)eca use. 



30 NOTES ON PROGRESS AND POVERTY. 



as Mr. George, shrewdly suspects, he had a vague idea 
of the Malthusian doctrine. 

''And it is impossible to read tlie works of econom- 
ists who since the time of Smith have endeavored to 
build up and elucidate the science of political economy 
without seeing how, over and over again, they stumble 
over the law of wages without once recognizing it. 
Yet, 'if it were a dog it would bite themf Indeed, it 
is difficult to resist the impression -that some of them 
really saw tliis law of wages, but, fearful of the practi- 
cal conclusions to which it would lead, preferred to ig- 
nore and cover it up, rather than use it as the key to 
problems which without it are so perplexing. A great 
truth to an age which has rejected and trampled on it, 
is not a word of peace, but a sword." — Page 158. 

What is this ''great truth" which Mr. George has 
been the first to formulate? Please turn back to the 
quotation beginning^ 'Is it not as plain," read it carefully 
and ask yourself what it means. Simpl}^ this — the 
man who pays rent has not as much profit from his la- 
bor and capital as if he paid no rent. We must con- 
gratulate Mr. George on the discovery of this "great 
truth," which all other students of political economy 
failed to recognize. 

Perhaps the reader is not satisfied: perhaps he thinks 
Mr. George's "law of wages and interest" means some- 
thing more. Let us see. We can reduce to a like law 
any other expense born by the farmer. Suppose he 
smokes his pipe and buys his tobacco. He would save 
more of the product of his labor and capital if he could 
get tobacco for nothing. We can reduce this "great 
truth" to a ''law," and formulate it almost in Mr. 
George's words. 

Is it not as plain as the simplest geometrical demon- 
stration, that the law of rent is the law of wages, inter- 
est and tobacco taken together, where the division is 
into rent, wages, interest and tobacco ? Stated reverse- 
ly, the law of tobacco is necessarily the law of wages 
and interest taken together, for it is the assertion, that 



NOTES ON* PR0(;R1']SS and I'D vert v. 31 

no matter what h;-" tho. ])rodiicti()ii of labor and t'ai)ital, 
these two factors will only receive in wag-(>s and inter- 
<'st what is left after tohaeeo is paid for. 

Or to put it in Al(;-el)raic form, 

Produce=Rent-|-Tobacco--Wai;-es--Int(n-est. 

Therefore Produce — Kent — Tol)acco=^^Vag•es- -Inter- 
est. 

May I not say of the law* of tobacco, in humble imi- 
tation of our author ? Mr. Henry George, in his great 
work on "Progress and Poverty," only failed to recog- 
nize it because he was blinded by his land theory. It 
is impossible to read his book without seeing how, over 
and over again, lie stumbles over the law of tobacco 
without recognizing it. Yet if it were a dog it would 
bite him. 

We cannot pass over an astounding statement, re- 
peated so distinctly and so frequent!}^ that there is no 
mistaking its meaning. 

''In short, the value of land depending wholly upon 
the power which its ownership gives of appropriating 
wealth created by labor, the increase of land values is 
always at the expense of the value of labor. And, 
hence, that the increase of productive power does not 
increase wages, is because it does increase the value of 
land. Kent swallow^s up the whole gain and pauper- 
ism accompanies progress." — Page 163. 

"The increased production of wealth goes ultimately 
to the owners of land in increased rent ; and, although, 
as improvement goes on, advantages may accrue to in- 
dividuals not landholders, which concentrate in their 
hands considerable portions of the increased produce, 
yet there is in all this improvement nothing whicli 
tends to increase the general return, either to labor or 
to capital . ' ' — Page 1 84. 

"But labor cannot reap the benefits which advancing 
civilization thus brings, because they are intercepted. 
Land being necessary to labor, and l)eing reduced to 
private ownership, every increase in the Y)roductive 
power of labor but increases rent — the price that labor 
must pay for the opportunity to utilize its powers; and 
thus all the advantages gained by the march of progress 



32 NOTES ON PROGRESS AND POVERTY. 

go to the owners of land, and wages do not increase. 
Wages cannot increase ; for the greater the earnings of 
labor the greater the price that labor must pay out of 
its earnings for the opportunity to make any earnings 
at all."— Par/e 204. 

Mr. George insists that, as land becomes more valua- 
ble, the whole increase is swallowed up in rent, while 
wages and interest remain the same. A single illustra- 
tion will show the absurdity of this assertion. For this 
example I am indebted to Mr. Mallock, although I 
give it in my own words. A farmer tills a few acres 
for which he pays a yearly rent of |100. Plis annua! 
receipts are |1,000; his profits therefore $900. In 
the course of time the surrounding country becomes 
thickly settled ; a neighboring village expands, into an 
important town; our farmer's land is worth ten times 
its former value, and its owner demands a rent of 
$1,000, instead of $100. The farmer makes up his 
mind to ra ise vegetables for the market instead of grain , 
and agrees to pay the required rent. His annual re- 
ceipts swell to 13,000, leaving him a balance of |2,000, 
for wages and interest, and an increase of |1,100 over 
his former gain. Now Mr. George maintains that the 
landlord pockets this |1,100, in addition to the $1,000 
rent, and that the farmer still clears only $900 a year. 
.Such is the nonsense which he dresses up in high- 
sounding jDcriods, and palms off on his unsuspecting 
readers as economic laws. 

An intelligent man has onlj'- to open his eyes and 
look about him, to see the falsehood of the teaching 
that ^'rent swallows up the whole gain" of product- 
ive power. The landholders are not the richest men 
in the country. The wealth of the Vanderbilts and the 
Goulds, the Mackays and the Floods, has come, not 
from rent, but from wages and interest, Such cor- 
porations as the Western Union Telegraph Company 



NOTES ON PROGRESS AND POVERTY 



and the Standard Oil Company, liave not made their 
milhons from the land. 

The readers of 'aM:>gress and Poverty" will easily 
recall a descriptive passage found in Book IV, Chapter 
II, written in its author's most attractive style. He 
follows the fortunes of an immigrant journeying over 
the unbroken prairie and seeking a site for a farm and a 
home. At length the choice is made, ''He must be his 
own wagon-maker, carpenter and cobbler." Priva- 
tions and hardships are borne by himself and his fam- 
ily, who have the bare necessaries of life, but none of 
its comforts. Bye and bye comes another immigrant, 
soon, a third. Others are attracted to the place; a 
village springs up and boasts a school, a store, a 
post-ofhce, even a church. It grows apace, it swells in- 
to a large city — ''a St. Louis, a Chicago or a San Fran- 
cisco." Our first settler's property acquires enormous 
value; he sells building lots for immense sums. 

''With the proceeds, he builds himself a fine house, 
and furnishes it handsomely. That is to say, to reduce 
the transaction to its lowest terms, the people who wish 
to use the land, build and furnish the house for him, 
on the condition that he will let them avail themselves 
of the superior productiveness which the increase of 
population has given the land."— Pag'e 173. 

"Like another Rip Van Winkle, he may have lain 
down and slept; he is rich not from anything he has 
done, but from the increase of population." — PageUp. 

Well, it was his luck; men every day draw prizes in 
the great lottery of life. The new arrivals who pur- 
chase the ground and thus "build and furnish a fine 
house" for the original occupier, do so with the expec- 
tation of growing rich and of making those who buy 
their wares build and furnish fine houses for them. 
Any of them who possessed his energy and persever- 
ance, might have been equally fortunate. But, Mr. 
George urges, he is not entitled to the increased value 
of the land, because that value has been given to it, 



34 NOTES 0]<f PK0GSB33 AND POVERTY. 



not by him, bat by the people who flocked in and 
built up the town. Nor, I reply, has its value been 
given it by the men who purchased it from the orig- 
inal owner, or by the population at large. It was 
the people that brought these men, not they that 
brought the people. 

As between the pioneer and the purchasers of the 
lots, the former has certainly the better claim, even' 
on Mr. George's own showing, for his settling there 
really brought the people who have made the place 
a great city. Mr. George says he might have lain 
down and slept like Kip Van Winkle. If he had act- 
ed like that lazy personage, the city would not be 
there. But he had the pluck to make his home in 
the heart of the wilderness, and the perseverance to 
toil for years in spite of difficulties and hardships, 
and it would be unjust to expect him to share his 
property with those who did not share his labors. 

Let no t)ne say that the newly made millionaire 
has no right to hold more land than he can use; 
that would be begging the question which Mr. George 
is trying to prove. 

CHAPTER V. 
Mr. George's Remedy. 

I pass over the chapter on the ''Inefficiency of Pro- 
posed Remedies," because my purpose is, not to urge 
or defend . any remedy for existing evils, but to dis- 
cuss the justice and the efficiency of what Mr. George 
calls ''the true remedy." 

He announces it in these positive terms. 

"There is but one way to remove an evil — and that 
is to remove its cause. Poverty deepens as wealth 
increases, and wages are forced down while produc- 
tive power grows, because land, which is the source of 
all wealth and the field of all labor, is monopolized. 
To extirpate poverty, to make wages what justice com- 
mands 'they should be, the full earnings of the la- 



NOTES ON PROGRESS AND POVERTY. 35 

borer, we must therefore substitute for the iudividual 
ownership of hind a connnon ownership. Nothing 
else will go to the cause of the evil — in nothing else 
is there the slightest hope. 

^'This, then, is the remedy for the unjust and un- 
equal distribution of wealth apparent m modern civ- 
ilization, and for all the evils which tlow from it. 

" We must make land common property. 

"We have reached this conclusion by an examination 
in which every step has been proved and secured. In 
the chain of reasoning no link is wanting and no link 
is weak. Deduction and induction have brought us 
to the same truth — that the unequal ownership of land 
necessitates the unequal distribution of wealth. And 
as in the nature of things unequal ownership of land is 
inseparable from the recognition of individual proper- 
ty in land, it necessarily follows that the only remedy 
for the unjust distribution of wealth is in making land 
common property." — Page 237. 

What surprises one most, is Mr. George's evident sin- 
cerity. W^ith all his ability, the man actually believes 
the absurdities he has written. "Not a link is weak.'' 
Every link in the chain of his reasoning is weak and 
brittle. Let us recapitulate, as he so often does. 
] First Link — Wages do not depend upon the ratio be- 
tween the. number of laborers seeking employment and 
the amount of capital devoted to the employment of 
labor. The reader will remember that we have found 
a fatal ftaw here. 

The Second Link — Wages are not derived from capital— r 
will hardly bear to be looked at, much less tested. 

The Third in?/;— The theory of Malthus disproved, al- 
though skillfully welded, is made of poor material and 
falls in pieces when roughly handled. 

The Fourth Link— As land increases in value, rent swal- 
lows up all the increase— is apparently the strongest in 
the chain, but breaks under the strain of a close ex- 
amination. 

When an advertiser puffs his particular nostrum as 
an infallible remedy for every disease, our first impulse 



36 NOTES ON PEOGEESS AND POVERTY. 

is to set him down as an impudent quack. If we do 
not contemptuously reject his cure-all as a humbugs 
we at least require clear j^roof of its efficacy. We 
should be equally slow and cautious when a reformer 
rises up and proclaims to the world that he has discov- 
ered a simple and infallible remedy for all its economic 
ills. We must be neither satisfied with vague gener- 
iilities nor dazzled by brilliant rhetoric; the mounte- 
bank who guarantees a perfect cure for a quarter, is 
ever loud of voice and glib of tongue. We demand 
hard logic and cold facts; the former we must analyze, 
the latter we must verify. 

CHAPTEK VI. 

Injustice of Private Property in Land. 
Mr. George states the question: 

"When it is proposed to abolish private property in 
land the first question that will arise is that of justice. 
Though often warped by habit, superstition and selfish- 
ness into the most distorted forms, the sentiment of 
Justice is yet fundamental to the human mind, and 
whatever dispute arouses the passions of men, the con- 
flict is sure to rage, not so much as to the question ''Is 
it wise ?" as to the question <*Is it right?" • 

"This tendency of popular discussions to take an eth- 
ical form has a cause. It springs from a law of the 
human mind; it rests upon a vague and instinctive re- 
cognition of what is probably the deepest trutfi we can 
grasp. That alone is wise which is just; that alone is 
enduring which is right. In the narrow scale of indi- 
vidual actions and individual life this truth may be 
often obscured, but in the wider field of national life 
it everywhere stands out. 

"I bow to this arbitrament, and accept this test. If 
our inquiry into the cause which makes low wages and 
pauperism the accompaniments of material progress 
has led us to a correct conclusion, it will bear transla- 
tion from terms of political economy into terms of eth- 
ics, and as the source of social evils show a wrong. If 
it will not do this, it is disproved. If it will do this, it 
is proved by the final decision. If private property in 
land be just, then is the remedy I propose a false one; 



NOTES ON PROGRESS AND POVERTY. 37 



if, on the contrary, private property in land be unjust, 
then is this remedy the true one."— Paye 239. 

He goes on to argue that ''the rightful basis of prop- 
erty" is ''the right of a man to himself, to the use of 
his own powers, to the enjoyment of the fruits of his 
own exertions." What a man makes by his labor is 
his against the whole world. "Xo one else can right- 
fully claim it, and his exclusive right to it involves no 
wrong to anyone else." There can be no other title to 
property. (1st,) because there is no other natural 
right from which any other title can be derived, and 
(2nd,) because the recognition of any other title is in- 
consistent with and destructive of this. 

"This right of ownership that springs from labor ex- 
cludes the possibility of any other right of ownership, 
[f a man be rightfully entitled to the produce of his 
labor, then no one can be rightfully entitled to the 
ownership of anything which is not the produce of his 
labor, or the labor of some one else from whom the right 
has passed to him. If production give to the producer 
the right to exclusive possession and enjoyment, there 
can rightfully be no exclusive possession and enjoyment 
of anything not the production of labor, and the re- 
cognition of private property in land is wrong." — Page 
241. 

This would be a strong argument if the producer of 
an article created it, that is, if he made it out of noth- 
ing by his own exertion. But man cannot create. 
Hear Mr. George himself : 

"When we speak of labor creating wealth, we speak 
metaphorically. Man creates nothing. The whole 
human race, were they to labor forever, could not 
create the tiniest mote that floats in a sunbeam — could 
not make this rolling sphere one atom heavier or one 
atom lighter. In producing wealth, labor, with the aid 
of natural forces, but works up, into the forms de- 
sired, pre-existing matter." — Page 196. 

Quite true. Labor only gives a new form to some- 
thing which existed before. Two factors go to make 
up production, viz. labor and material. My labor is 



38 ]SrOTES ON PROGRESS AND POVERTY. 

my own ; the material on which it is employed must 
be mine too; before I can claim the finished product 
as my property. I may build a house of brick, but if 
the bricks belong to my neighbor, I cannot say the 
house is mine. Let us take Mr. George's illustration^ 
Let us suppose, for the sake of clearness, that his pejx 
•was made by the person who washed the gold out of a 
stream in California. That gold, in its raw state, was 
LAND according to Mr. George's definition. Now it was 
either the property of the man who subsequently fashr 
ioned it into a pen, or it was not^ If it were his right- 
ful property, then a man may justly own land, and 
Mr. George's theory is false. If the gold were not the 
property of the finder, then the pen was not his, and 
Mr. George's reasoning is bad ; for the workman'^ 
labor only gave a diff:"erent form to what did not belong 
to him. 

If the only title to ownership be one's right to the fruit 
of his own labor, and if no man can own land it follows 
that no man can own anything ; for everything is made 
from land, and labor is exerted on material that th^ 
laborer does not and cannot own. 

The right of holding land as property has doubtless 
been abused; what human right has not? If the 
State were to take from us everything that might be 
employed to injure others, what would be left us? 
Some have more land than they can use, Avhile otheris 
have none ; is that a reason why no man should own 
land? Some have more money than they know what 
to do with ; there are others unable to purchase the 
necessaries of life ; does that prove" that every man's 
money should be confiscated ? 

• The remaining chapters of Book VII need not delay 
us long. They contain little but declamation. Chapter 
II is entitled ''The enslavement of laborers the ultimate 
result of private property in land." The answeris 
short and easy. 



NOTES ON PROGRESS AND POVERTY. 39 

So far from becoming enslaved, labor is every year 
growing more independent. Oar labor organizations 
stand to-day on a plane which twenty years ago the 
most sanguine of their members could scarcely have 
thought of reaching. Look at the Amalgamated Union 
of Iron and Steel Workers, the Brotherhood of Loco- 
motive Engineers, the Knights of Labor and believe 
with Mr. George, if you can, that *' the condition of the 
masses in every civilized country is, or is tending to be- 
come, that of virtual slavery under the forms of free- 
dom." 

Labor undoubtedly has grievances. In its lower 
grades especially, it seldom receives the reward to 
which it is fairly entitled. Capital is grasping and sel- 
fish, is accustomed to look upon the hands it employs 
as so many machines, and to wring from them the 
most work at the lowest cost. The manufacturer looks 
on labor as a marketable commodity, subject to the 
laws of supply and demand, and buys it at the lowest 
price for which he can get it. This is the reason why 
wages tend to a minimum, as laborers increase in num- 
bers. 

If corporations are soulless, capital is heartless ; nay 
more, it is often unjust. The workingman has a right 
to a fair share of what his labor co-operates with capi- 
tal to produce ; and that share is what Avill maintain 
himself and his family. The employer who pays him 
less is guilty of a sin which cries to heaven for ven- 
geance. But the wrongs which labor suffers, cannot 
be traced to private ownership of land. Even if Mr. 
George were right in contending that labor is sinking 
into slavery, he is wrong in asserting that such enslav- 
ment would be remedied by confiscating land. More 
of this anon. 

In Chapter IV Mr. George proceeds to show that, in 
early times, land was considered the common property 
of all the people. That is true of uncivilized or only 



40 NOTES ON PROGRESS AND POVERTY. 

partly civilized races. Those who depend on hunting 
and fishing for subsistence, never appropriate land for 
individual use. The same is the case with pastoral 
tribes, who drive their flocks and herds from place to 
place in search of pasture. But, as men advance in 
civilization, they begin to recognize ownership of land 
in a more or less imperfect manner. At first it takes 
the form of tribal or communal proprietorship; but, 
with the increase of population and the advance of 
civilization, private property in land is established. Mr 
George appears to admire the feudal system, under 
which the King was the only proprietor of the soil,.and 
allotted portions of it to his followers in consideration 
of certain services which they pledged themselves to 
render him. But, as time went on, the idea of person- 
al liberty was more developed, the prerogatives of roy- 
alty were curtailed and the right of holding land as 
private property recognized in every civilized country. 
CHAPTER VI. 
Application and Effects of the Remedy. 

We have at last reached the practical part of Mr. 
George's scheme. 
Hear his own statement. 

''I do not propose either to purchase or to confis- 
cate private property in land. The first would be un- 
just; the second, needless. Let the individuals who 
now hold it still retain, if they want to, possession of 
what they are pleased to call their land. Let them 
continue 'to call it their land. Let them buy and sell, 
and bequeath and devise it. We may safely leave 
them the shell, if we take the kernel. It is not ne- 
cessary to confiscate land; it is only necessary to confiscate 
rent. " 

Nor to take rent for public uses is it necessary that 
the State should bother with the letting of lands, and 
assume the chances of the favoritism, collusion, and 
corruption that might involve. It is not necessary that 
any new machinery should be created. The machin- 
ery already exists. Instead of extending it, all we 



NOTES ON PROGRESS AND POVERTY. 41 

have to do is to simplify and reduce it. By leaving to 
land owners a percentage of rent, which would proh- 
ably be much less than the cost and loss involved in 
attempting to rent lands through State agency, and }>y 
making use of this existing machinery, we may, with- 
out jar or shock, assert the common Vight to land by 
taking rent for public uses. 

"We already take some rent in taxation. We have 
only to make some changes in our motles of taxation 
to take it all. 

"What I, therefore, propose, as the simple yet sove- 
reign reniedj^, which will raise wages, increase the earn^ 
ings of capital, extirpate pauperism, abolish poverty, 
give remunerative employment to whoever wishes it, 
afford free scope to human powers, lessen crime, ele- 
vate morals, and taste, and intelligence, purify govern- 
ment and carry civilization to yet nobler heights, is — 
to appropriate rent by taxation. 

**In this way, the State may become the universal 
landlord without calling herself so, and without assum- 
ing a single new function. In form, the ownership of 
land would remain just as now. Xo owner of land 
need be dispossessed, and no restriction need be placed 
upon the amount of land any one could hold. For, rent 
being taken by the State in taxes, land, no matter in 
whose name it stood, or in what parcels it was held, 
would be really common property, and every member 
of the community would participate in the advantages 
of its ownership. 

"Now, insomuch as the taxation of rent, or land 
values, must necessarily be increased just as we abolish 
other taxes, we may put the proposition into practical 
form by proposing — 

"To abolish all taxation save that upon land values.'^ — Pages 
292, 293. 

This part of "Progress and Poverty," which ought 
to be the most interesting and the most definite, is dis- 
appointing. 

Instead of finding details carefully worked out and 
results attested by facts and figures, we are treated to 
vague promises of supposed advantages, and fiorid de- 
scriptions of the blessings which would follow the ap- 
plication of the panacea. 



42 NOTES ON PROGEESS AND POVERTY. 

Here is one of the results we are promised: 

'*To abolish the taxation which, acting and reacting, 
now hampers every wheel of exchange and presses upon 
every form of industry, would be like removing an im- 
mense weight from a powerful spring. Imbued with 
fresh energy, production would start into new life, and 
trade would receive a stimulus which would be felt to 
the remotest arteries. * * ^^ -5^ To abolish these 
taxes would be to lift the whole enormous weight of 
taxation from productive industry. The needle of the 
seamstress and the great manufactory; the cart-horse 
and the locomotive; the fishing boat and the steam- 
ship; the farmer's plow and the merchant's stock, would 
be alike untaxed." — Page 311. 

Taxation would be taken off manufacture and trans- 
ferred to land. But no manufacture can be carried on 
without the use of land. The manufacturing process 
and the occupation of land are two of the factors which 
go to make up the finished product. On which of these 
factors the tax may be levied is immaterial ; in either 
case it must be paid, and in either case it raises the cost 
of the goods made in the mill or the workshop. How, 
then, would the change proposed by Mr. George relieve 
manufacture ? 

Taxation on production is paid, not by the producer, 
but by the consumer. The former simply adds the 
amount of the tax to the price of his wares, and charges 
it to his consumers. Now we are all purchasers alike 
of the products of the soil and of manufactured goods; 
hence we, the people at large, pay all taxes on both. 
Whether we pay them on production or on land is the 
same to us. The transfer proposed by Mr. George would 
be no relief to us, and could not, therefore, relieve or 
increase production. 

Moreover, increased production is no advantage un- 
less it be accompanied by increased demand. It is an 
injury, as our manufacturers and workingmen know 
to their cost. 



NOTKS OX PROrniK.SS AND POVKIITV. 4.S 



Our author claims, moreover, that the adoption of 
his plan Avould destroy speculation m land, and thus 
open up vasts tracts to actual settlers. 

"The selling price of land would fall; land specula- 
tion would receive its death blow; land m()no])oliza- 
tion would no longer pay. ^Millions and milli(jns of 
acres from which settlers are now shut out hy high 
prices would be abandoned l)y their present owners "7)r 
sold to settlers upon nominal terms. And this not 
merely on the frontiers, but within what are now con- 
sidered well settled districts. Within a hundred miles 
of San Francisco would be thus thrown open land 
enough to support, even with the present modes of 
cultivation, an agricultural population equal to that 
now scattered from the Oregon boundary to the ]\I('x- 
can line — a distance of SCO niiles. In the same degree 
would this be true of most of the Western States and 
in a great degree of the older Eastern States, for even 
in New York and Pennsj-lvania is population yet sparse 
as compared with the capacity of the land. And even 
in densely populated England Avould such a policy 
throw open to cultivation manj^ hundreds of thousand's 
of acres now held as private parks, deer preserves, and 
shooting grounds." — Page 313. 

Whether or not these expectations would be realized, 
is a question to be solved bj' the rules of arithmetic, not 
of rhetoric. 

Speculation in land, like speculation in grain or oil 
or pork or any other commodity, will continue as long 
as it will pay. That speculation in land values would 
still be prohtable, even if Mr. George's plan were 
adopted, can be readily shown by a familiar example. 
Suppose a man owns an acre in the neighborhood of a 
p-rowine: and thriving town. Its value now is SI ,000, 
but the owner is confident that it will be worth ^^4,01)0 
in three years. The tax is, let us say, five per cent, per 
annum on its assessed value ; and to make the case as 
favorable as possible for .Mr. George's theory, let us 
suppose it is assessed at its full value. , 



44 NOTES ON PROGRESS AND POVERTY. 

By selling now he will receive $1,000 00 

He will save the taxes for three years at 

5 per cent 150 00 

He will have three years' interest on 

11,000 at 5 per cent 150 00 

He will have one and two years' interest on 

the amount of the annual tax 7 50 

Total saved or gained by selling now $1,307 50 

I do not lose sight of the fact that the assessment 
will be raised from time to time, as the property grows 
in value. A new valuation is an expensive process, 
and will hardly be made oftener than every thn-d, or, 
at most, every second year. But even if it were made 
annually, the land tax would not ^'give a death 
blow to speculation." Suppose for the sake of argu- 
ment, a new valuation is made every year. A pur- 
chaser is found for the above-mentioned property at the 
end of three years, and he pays $4,000 for it. He cal- 
culates it will bring $5,000 in another year. 

The acre has cost him $4,000 00 

The tax for one year will be 200 00 

Interest on the purchase money 200 00 

Total cost... $4,400 00 

Amount received at the end of the year... $5, 000 00 

Balance in favor of the speculator... $600 00 

His real profit is $800, or 20 per cent on his invest- 
ment. If the land be still increasing in value, he can 
realize a profit by holding it for another year or for 
as many years as it continues to grow valuable, as the 
reader can readily calculate. I need not observe that, 
for the continuance of speculation, it is not necessa-ry 



NOTES ON PUOtiRLSS AND POVKUTY. 45 



that a profit be certain. There is an element of risk in 
all speculation, properly so called. Enougli, however, 
has been said to show that speculation in land would not 
be demolished by the adoption of Mr. George's plan. 

Let us see wdiat effects "'the application of the rem- 
edy" would have ''upon individuals and classes." 

'*It is manifest, of course, that the change 1 pro])ose 
will greatly benefit all those who live by wages, whether 
of hand or of head — laborers, operatives, mechanics, 
clerks, professional men of all sorts. It is manifest, 
also, that it will benefit all those who live partly l)y 
Avages and partly by the earnings of their capital— 
— storekeepers, merchants, manufacturers, employing 
or undertaking producers and exchangers of all sorts 
from the peddler or drayman to the railrcxid or st(>am- 
ship owner — and it is likewise manifest that it will in- 
crease the incomes of those whose incomes are drawn 
from the earnings of capital, or from investments 
other than in lands, save, perhaps the holders of (gov- 
ernment bonds or other securities bearing fixed rates 
of interest, which will probably depreciate in selling 
value, owing to the rise m the general rate of interest, 
though the income from them will remain the same." 
— Pages 320, 321. 

Begging Mr. George's pardon, nothing of the kind is 
''manifest." Like every other producer, the farmer 
Avould compel the consumer of his grain and vege- 
tables to pay the tax on his land; in other words, he 
would increase the price of every article he raises. The 
immediate result w^ould be a rise in the price of the 
necessaries of life. Would that "greatly benefit all 
those who live by wages ?" Would it not fall with 
crushing weight on the poor, the very class "the rem- 
edy" is intended to benefit ? A tax on farming land 
is a tax on every morsel of food which goes into every 
one's mouth. The classes of persons above mentioned 
would be relieved from direct taxation, it is true; but 
this relief would be ott'set by the fact that they would 
be required to pay their proportion of the tax im- 
posed on the farmer. 



46 NOTES ON PROGRESS AND POVERTY. 

" Take, now, the case of the homestead owner— the 
mechanic, storekeeper, or professional man who has 
secured himself a house and lot, where he lives, and 
which he contemplates with satisfaction as a place from 
which his family cannot be ejected in case of his death. 
He will not be injured ; on the contrary, he Avill be the 
gainer. The selling value of his lot will diminish — 
theoretically it will entirely disappear. But its useful- 
ness to him will not disappear. It will serve his pur- 
pose as well as ever. While, as the value of all other 
lots will diminish or disappear in the same ratio, he re- 
tains the same security of always having a lot that he 
had before. That is to say, he is a loser only as the 
man who has bought himself a pair of boots may be 
said to be a loser by a subsequent fall in the price of 
boots. His boots will be just as useful to him, and the 
next pair of boots he can get cheaper. So, to the 
homestead owner, his lot will be as useful, and should 
he look forward to getting a larger lot, or having his 
children, as they grow up, get homesteads of their own, 
he will, even in the matter of lots, be the gainer. And 
in the present, other things considered, he will be much 
the gainer. For though he will have more taxes to 
pay upon his land, he will be released from taxes upon 
his house and improvements, upon his furniture and 
personal property, upon all that he and his family 
eat, drink and wear, while his earnmgs will be largely 
increased by the rise in wages, the constant employ- 
ment and the increased briskness of trade. His only 
loss will be if he wants to sell his lot without getting 
another, and this will be small loss compared with the 
great gain." — Page 321. 

What a happy man that lot-holder will be ! After 
toiling and saving for years to buy a lot and build a 
homestead, he finds good luck in the shape of a per- 
petual mortgage on the ground for which he has al- 
ready paid in full. But Mr. George assures him that 
he will be more than compensated by *'the rise of 
wages, the constant employment and the increased 
briskness of trade." How these results will follow, I 
am at a loss to understand ; and Mr. George is so ab- 
sorbed in contemplating his lot-holder's bliss that he 
forgets to explain these trifling details. 



NOTES ON PROORKSS AND TOVIIKPY. 



There is a wide difference between the man who 
built the homestead and the one who bouiclit the boots. 
The hitter really owns the boots, oyrn if lii' has given a 
high price for them ; but the loriucr is only the nom- 
inal owner of the lot, althouuh lie has paid the full 
value of it. 

The ingenuity of our author is next displayed ''in 
IDOinting out the blessing whieh his [)lan would confer 
on ^'working farmers" — not those blood-suckers ''who 
never touch the handles of a plough" — but "men who 
own small farms." 

''Paradoxical as it may seem to these men until they 
understand the full bearings of the proposition, of all 
classes they have most to gain l)y i)lacing all taxes on 
the value of land." 

Paradoxical it certainly does seem even to men who 
are not farmers ; but Mr. George proceeds to explain 
''the full bearings of the proposition." 

"The fact is that taxation, as now levied, falls on 
them (the farmers) with peculiar severity. They are 
taxed on all their improvements — houses, barns, fences, 
crops, stocks. The personal property which they have 
cannot be as readily concealed or undervalued as can 
the more valuable kinds which are concentrated in the 
cities. They are not only taxed on personal property 
and improvements, which the owers of unused land 
escape, but their land is generally taxed at a high(n- 
rate than land held on speculation, simply because it 
is improved." 

Here follow some remarks on the injuries which 
farmers suffer from the protective tariff, but I shall 
take no notice of them, because it would be impossible 
for me to discuss the tariff" question in these few pages, 
and because such grievances may be redressed without 
recourse to Mr. George's remedy. 

"The farmer would be a great gainer V)y the substi- 
tution of a single tax for all these taxes, for the taxa- 
tion of land values would fall with greatest weight, 
not upon agricultural districts, where land vahu^s are 



NOTES ON PROGRESS AND POVERTY. 



comparatively small, but upon the towns and cities 
where land valnes are high ; Avhereas taxes upon per- 
sonal property and improvement fall as heavily in the 
country as in the city. And in sparsely settled districts 
there would be hardly any taxes for the farmer to pay. 
For taxes being levied upon the value of the bare land, 
would fall as heavily upon unimproved as upon im- 
proved land. 

"In fact, paradoxical as it may seem, the effect of 
putting all taxation upon the value of land would be 
to relieve the harder working farmers of all taxation." 
—Pages 322 and 323. 

This passage fairly out-George's Mr. George. Are 
farmers the only people at present taxed on their im- 
provements ? Are they taxed at a higher rate than' 
others ? How is the personal property of farmers less 
easily concealed or undervalued than that of dwellers 
in cities? Is it true that owners of unused land escape 
taxation on personal property ? Of course those whose 
land is not improved are not taxed on improvements 
which do not exist, just as the man who has no car- 
riage is not required to pay the tax on vehicles. But 
how does that injure the farmer? That ''farmers' land 
is generally taxed at a higher rate than land held on 
speculation," simply because it is improved, only means 
that their improvements, like those of other property 
holders, are taxed ; if it means more, it is not true. 
Our author uses a very u;ihappy expression when he 
declares that taxes fall on farmers with peculiar severi- 
ty. On the contrary, they fall on farmers as they do 
on other persons ; hence the severity, as he is pleased 
to call it, is general. But it would be peculiar, if he 
had his way ; for he would put all the taxes on land. 

He attempts to cajole the farmers by assuring them 
the amount they will be obliged to pay the tax collec- 
tor will be trifling in comparison with the sums to be 
levied on city property. That is true, but only in 
the sense that the man who owns town lots worth say 
$20,000, will be taxed more heavily than he who tills a 



KOTPlS OX PROGRESS AND Po\ KUTY, 49 



farm valiietl at $1,000. As Mr. (ioin'^e warms with his 
'Subject, he tells the farmer that '-in si.arsdy scttliHl 
districts there would he hardly any taxes at all for 
them to pay;" nay mon«, h<> reaches tin- cliinax of ah- 
sm\lity hy asserting that "the etl'tn-t of jjuttin,-^ all tax- 
ation upon the value of huul would hi' to relieve the 
iiarder working farmers of all taxation." 

( IIAITKK Vll. 
Some AJfW.s- of "T/w liemah//' 
Let us suppose that Mr. Ch^^rge's plan has been 
adopted, that taxation has been taken oft' all other 
values and transferred to land. Our author takes for 
granted that no rent will he paid save what will Ix' tak(>n 
by the Government in the shajie of taxes ; and here he 
is mistaken. He tells us himself that land will be 
^'boughtand sold, bequeathed and devised," just as 
before ; and he might have added it will be rented too. 
It will still have its value ; and those who hold it will 
charge rent for the use of it. 

How will the condition of the poor he improved ? 
They will be no morc^ able to buy land than they were 
before. They must live sominvhere, and the owners of 
the dwellings which they must occupy will charge rent 
for the use of the ground on which these dwellings 
stand. Land may be cheaper, but rents will hardly be 
lower; indeed they may he higher than under the old 
system ; for, as the manufacturer adds the amount of 
his tax to the price of his produce, nnd thus makes the 
consumer pay it, so the landlord will add the land-tax j 
to the rent of his property, and thus comixM the tenant / 
to bear the burden. 

• Mr. George has not succeeded in destroying the vam- 
pire rent which, according ti:) his teaching, sucks the 
life-blood of capital and labor. Wliat does Ik^ mean 
by "natural opportunities free to labor?" What natu- 
ral opportunities will be free to labor that were hither- 



50 NOTES ON POVERTY AND PROGRESS. 

to cJosed against it? If he means land, he is wrong 
again; for land will be no more ''free to labor" than it 
was before. 
I^Bat he promises the following advantages: 

''There would be a great and increasing surplus rev- 
enue from the taxation of land values, for material 
progress, which would go on with greatly accelerated 
rapidity, would tend constantly to increase rent. This 
revenue arising from the common property could be ap- 
plied to the common benefit, as were the revenues of 
Sparta. We might not establish public tables — they 
would be unnecessary; but we could establish public 
baths, museums, libraries, gardens, lecture rooms, 
iTiusic and dancing halls, theaters, universities, tech- 
nical schools, shooting galleries, play grounds, gym- 
nasiums, etc. Heat, light, and motive power, as well 
as water, might be conducted through our streets at 
public expense; our roads be lined with fruit trees;^ dis- 
coverers and inventors rewarded, scientific investiga- 
tions supported; and in a thousand ways the public 
revenues made to foster efforts for the public benefit." 
— Pages 326 and ?27. 

. "A great and increasing surplus revenue," quotha ! 
Let us see. 

Professor W. T. Harris proves, in the July number of 
The Forum, that there is a serious mistake in these san- 
guine expectations. Taking his figures from the U. S. 
Census of 1880 and returns from the State of Massa- 
chusetts, he sums up in these words: 

"This will give a total of $6,592,000,000, for building 
sites and agricultural lands. The rate of assessment 
for taxes is usually fixed at two-thirds of the market 
value. Allowing for this, the actual value of all land 
n the United States owned as private property must 
have been somewhat less than $10,000,000,000 for the 
year 1880. Counting the rent on this land at 4 per cent, 
we have been less than $400,000,000, per annum, making 
an average of nearly $8 for each inhabitant, or a little 
more than 2 cents per day. 

"The result surprises us. Two cents per day, or $8 



NOTP]S ON PROGRESS AND POVEHTY. 51 

per year, would not l)ring ease and Inxiiry to those 
wlio are struggling with poverty. Nor would it amount 
to a vast revenue in the aggregate as a tax. Four per 
eent — and it is fair to estimate the return in rent as 
under this figure, because, when lands yield more than 
this amount in rent the valuation is at once raised — 
would give the Government only $400,000,000, a sum 
only slightly in excess of the amount annually paid for 
local taxes, (State, County, Township and District) 
while the total of taxation, national and local, amounts 
to nearly $800,000,000. To pay all taxes, both national 
and local, ground rent would have to be increased to 
7i- per cent." 

This alone is sufficient to show that Mr. George is 
a mere visionary, that lie has taken no pains to study 
out the consequences of his own theory. While he 
romances about ''public baths, museums, libraries, 
gardens," etc., to be maintained from the imaginary 
sur[)lus of his land-tax, we find the sober fact to be 
that the annual rent of all the land in the United States, 
held as private property, would defray only about 
half the ordinary expenses of general and local Gov- 
ernment.^) 

o 

1 have paid no attention to Mr. George's other wri- 
tings, because the substance of them is contained in 
the work before us, and because our author himself 
refers to it as a more methodical and scientific state- 
ment of his theory. (See Social Problems, note to page 
159.) 

''Progress and Poverty" is certainly a remarkable 
book. The style is graceful and often elegant, the ar- 
rangement clear and scientific, and the reasoning most 
ingenious. A treatise of "the dismal science," it is 
ahnost as fascinating as a fairy tale. But its argu- 
ments are for the most part ingenious fallacies, its 
assumptions mere fancies, and its illustrations verita- 



52 NOTES ON PEOGEESS AND POVEETY. 

ble boomerangs. I have already borne testimony to 
Mr. George's evident sincerity. I believe him to be, 
moreover, a thorough philanthropist, eager to improve 
the condition of the poorer classes. Bat, like many 
other well-meaning j^ersons, he has done more harm 
than good. He makes an incorrect diagnosis, and 
prescribes the wrong remedy. 

His mistakes can be easily explained; he began his 
enquiry after he had formed his conclusion, carried 
it on by stretching or mutilating every fact and argu- 
ment that did not fit into the Procrustean bed of 
his theory, and ended by producing a book which 
deserves a place amongst the curiosities of literature. 




